used by some
instrument with a very broad surface, or by a violent knock of the head
against some hard substance of considerable magnitude.

But no weapon, other than the revolver, had been found; and it was
evidently not heavy enough to produce such a wound. There must, then,
necessarily, have been a hand-to-hand struggle between the pretended
soldier and the murderer; and the latter, seizing his adversary by the
throat, had dashed him violently against the wall. The presence of some
very tiny but very numerous spots of extravasated blood about the neck
made this theory extremely plausible.

No other wound, not even a bruise or a scratch, was to be found. Hence,
it became evident that this terrible struggle must have been exceedingly
short. The murder of the pretended soldier must have been consummated
between the moment when the squad of police heard the shrieks of despair
and the moment when Lecoq peered through the shutter and saw the victim
fall.

The examination of the other murdered man required different but
even greater precautions than those adopted by the doctors in their
inspection of the pseudo soldier. The position of these two victims
had been respected; they were still lying across the hearth as they had
fallen, and their attitude was a matter of great importance, since it
might have decisive bearing on the case. Now, this attitude was such
that one could not fail to be impressed with the idea that with both
these men death had been instantaneous. They were both stretched out
upon their backs, their limbs extended, and their hands wide open.

No contraction or extension of the muscles, no trace of conflict could
be perceived; it seemed evident that they had been taken unawares, the
more so as their faces expressed the most intense terror.

"Thus," said the old doctor, "we may reasonably suppose that they were
stupefied by some entirely unexpected, strange, and frightful spectacle.
I have come across this terrified expression depicted upon the faces of
dead people more than once. I recollect noticing it upon the features of
a woman who died suddenly from the shock she experienced when one of
her neighbors, with the view of playing her a trick, entered her house
disguised as a ghost."

Lecoq followed the physician's explanations, and tried to make them
agree with the vague hypotheses that were revolving in his own brain.
But who could these individuals be? Would they, in death, guard the
secret of t